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Fulfillment By Amazon – or simply FBA, as it’s more commonly called – has revolutionized the way home-based sellers fulfill their orders. It has created an easier, more streamlined approach to selling, removing concerns like returns, logistics and customer service from the seller and passing on discounts to the consumer. In short, it’s a win-win-win situation where each party involved – the seller, the consumer and Amazon – benefit.

But Canadians often find the system prohibitively expensive, the high cost of shipping to Amazon fulfillment centres being a barrier for entry to many sellers here. Luckily, netParcel works with international shipping companies to provide you amazing rates from Canada to FBA centers in the States. In this article, we’ll look at how to use the FBA program, the reasons for using the program, and how you can utilize netParcel’s network of courier and LTL shipping services to make the program more viable for your business.

What Is FBA

Traditionally, when you made a sale through your online store, you would have to package the item yourself, ship it off to the customer yourself and deal with customer service and returns. All of these little steps, while they might seem negligible, add up to be a large chuck of a retailer’s time. With FBA, you instead send your items in bulk to one of Amazon’s fulfillment centres, along with your individualized barcodes, and Amazon deals with the rest. They store the items, pack the items, ship them to their destinations, and deal with customer service.

How To Use FBA

This Amazon Seller Central Article does a thorough job explaining how to use FBA, but we’ll see if we can reduce it to a nutshell here. Essentially, from your Amazon account, you select what inventory you are sending to Amazon, set the quantity and prepare the shipment, and print out labels. You then prepare the shipment, which you can do easily and cost-effectively from Canada through netParcel – learn about our shipping services here before you start your FBA shipment.

The Benefits Of FBA

As mentioned, the FBA program saves you as a retailer from having to wear a number of different hats. The time you save packing and fielding customer service questions can be put towards scaling up the business, and the space you save by not having to store your products can be used as administrative space. In addition to these, because all the shipments are localized in a single centre (well, many centres across the US), Amazon is able to offer two-day shipping to your customers.

How netParcel Helps

As this Redditor points out in a Reddit FBA thread, shipping to an FBA centre from Canada can be costly, but as another commenter in the thread quickly points out, you can use netParcel to cut that cost significantly. This is true. Because you are able to instantaneously shop around for the best price on shipping, and because, through our network, we offer great rates to Amazon FBA centres, netParcel opens up the benefits of the FBA program to Canadians. If you are having trouble figuring out the process, our support staff are here to help you with your issue

Using Fulfillment By Amazon can be a major game changer for home businesses, but it was a game changer that, before, was only financially viable for Americans. Thankfully, with netParcel, you can reap the benefits of FBA without having to spend a lot of money.